In a copying machine, there has been known a system for notifying a centrally managing device disposed at the center of cumulative printing times, the residual amount of toner or the like, occurrence of a failure or the like, summarizing the use condition of the copying machine, or remotely diagnosing the copying machine by the use of a public telephone line network. For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 6-164802 discloses a managing system for an image forming apparatus for centrally managing data on a copying machine via a public line network.
In this way, the managing system serving as a peripheral device for such a copying machine has been satisfactorily improved in recent years, and therefore, there has appeared an information delivering system for delivering information such as an advertisement or news to the copying machine by the use of the managing system.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-59554 (“first prior art”) discloses an information delivering system configured such that information such as an advertisement or news stored in a managing device is periodically delivered to a copying machine, which then outputs the delivered information. According to the first prior art, the information such as an advertisement or news is periodically delivered to the copying machine by using a system to be normally used in remotely diagnosing the copying machine, and the information is displayed on a console panel of the copying machine during a copying operation, thereby preventing any dullness which a user may feel when the same advertisement is displayed all the time.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-256256 (“second prior art”) discloses an image forming system configured such that a copying machine is connected to an advertisement managing server via a network, and when the copying machine makes a request for an advertisement image added with the shape of a margin space of a document image, the advertisement managing server transmits an advertisement image having a shape much similar to the shape of the margin space to the copying machine. According to the second prior art, it is possible to offer the advertisement adapted to the margin space of the image of an original document to be copied.
However, since it is presumed that the information to be advertised is previously registered in the managing device in the conventional information advertisement system typified by the above-described First or Second Prior Art, it is unclear as to however the information to be advertised is registered in the managing device.
Consequently, an operator of the managing device must normally receive a command from an advertisement client so as to register the information to be advertised in the managing device every time, thereby arising a problem that the information to be advertised cannot be efficiently registered in the managing device. Moreover, there may arise a problem that if the advertisement client wants to advertise something at once, it is impossible to fulfill such needs of the advertisement client. Additionally, there may arise a problem that the above-described prior art cannot fulfill the needs of the advertisement client, for example, the area of a customer to which the advertisement client wants to direct the advertisement.
In view of this, it is remarkably important to speedily offer an advertisement to a customer with high efficiency in such a manner as to fulfill the needs of the advertisement client by the use of a system to be used for remotely managing the copying machine.